


be nice to me: Reposted

by ShadowLord56



Category: Tribe Twelve
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/F, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Multi, Mutual Pining, Neighbors, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, Slow Burn, but like. fast, fight me, yes i re-posted this fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:21:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26805028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowLord56/pseuds/ShadowLord56
Summary: you two grew up so well
Relationships: Noah Maxwell/Reader
Comments: 10
Kudos: 5





	be nice to me: Reposted

Thank god Wayback Machine exists lol

You're the one to approach him, where he's squat over a square of wet turf and dragging a stick thickly through the patch of recent mud. He looks your age—seven too, maybe has a good number of inches of height on you—but he's separated himself from the rest of the kids, who're currently entangled in a community game of tag on the play structure. 

Your shadow falls over his shoulder as you hover nearby, watching as he carves an uneven eye into the ground, splitting the wet crust of the earth, but he doesn't notice you.

"Hi!" you finally start, when the silence stretches to a point of discomfort. He jolts, tearing backward so fast he barrels into you, turning to face you with a hand clamped around the back of his head. 

"Hi," he returns dryly after an observational pause. He turns back around, retrieving the stick and stabbing it back into the mud. Behind him, you frown slightly, a pondering, slanted line that you force into a welcoming smile. Finally, you start again, "whats your name?"

He must've thought you left because he again jumps, protectively leaning to cover his drawing and send a searing glare back your way. He relents, anyway, or just wants to sate you so you'll wander off again. "Noah," he gives, punctuated after another silence. He doesn't ask for yours but you offer him it anyways, and though you sense he doesn't much appreciate your presence you crouch down next to him as he cuts shapes into the dirt.

He's shy, you decide, though that must not be entirely true with the wicked glare he sends you from where he's sat. 

"Do you mind?" he asks. He shifts his grip on the stick, finally looking at you fully. Despite the scowl that wrenches his features, you think he has caring eyes. You're taken a back, brows arching up to your hairline then down, knitted in a contemplative line.

"Ah, uh, sorry." 

You stand, wiping the imprints of mud off on your shorts. Damp dirt is spattered across your knees now. 

Across the tanbark arena, a woman sat at a bench calls out, prying her ear from her phone and covering the screen with a delicate hand.

"Are you being nice, Noah?" she asks, less a question, emphasized with warning. His shoulders peak and with a visible wince he turns back to you. 

"You can stay," he shrugs. It's less irritated now and more a limp relenting. He returns to drawing but you catch his stare focused on your shadow. His eyes flit to you when you move to his side. 

"What're you drawing?" you strain to peer over his shoulder. The mud is carved neatly, separated vertically, like butchered meat, but you can't make out anything certain. "Um," Noah says; again, this is said after a pause. "Stuff," said, this time quieter, a loose roll of the shoulders in a second, half-hearted shrug. 

"Can I draw with you?" you ask, finally. Noah stops another shrug with a softer, "Sure, yeah." 

You dig up an appropriately-sized stick from whats scattered about and take up a seat next to him again. The sun, retreating, beats down on your backs and sears the blacktop to a molten platform. The light catches in your eye in blinding rings. 

Noah is not especially talkative at first, you learn quickly, and the conversation is steered mostly by you, rambling about yourself and sometimes offering questions to get him to pitch in. When he does, his responses are surprisingly long and rambling. You take that with hope that he's warming up to you, and can't tamp down the smile that splits your face.

The sun whittles away across the horizon line of pale tree tops, sliced by telephone wires, time spent first notching a canvas out of the mud, then later you construct a sickly little house out of leaves and rocks, paved together with a solution of mud. Stars eat at the corners of the sky like white little moths by the time Noah's mom takes him by the wrist and leads him down the sidewalk in the direction of the gate, parting with the goodbye that Noah neglects you. By that point you could do with a bath, the indent of tanbark on your knees and mud somehow in your hair, and your minds turned to thoughts of dinner, so you're happily led along by your own parent to the car

**Author's Note:**

> Hail the Wayback Machine.


End file.
